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Memories of Universal VictimhoodThe Case of Ethnic German Expellees

Daniel LevySociology, State University of New York, Stony Brook

Natan SznaiderSchool of Behavioral Sciences, Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo

Remembering Past Injustices

Images of German victims have become a ubiquitous feature ofpolitical debates and mass-mediated cultural events in recent years.This paper argues that changing representations of the Holocausthave served as a political cultural prism through which histories ofGerman victimhood can be renegotiated. More specifically, weexplore how the centrality of the Holocaust in Germany informshow the postwar expulsion of twelve million ethnic Germans hasbeen remembered during the last sixty years. Most interpretations ofthe destruction of European Jewry and the expulsion of ethnic Ger-mans from Poland and Czechoslovakia and their correspondingmemory cultures treat these memories as mutually exclusive mani-festations of competing perceptions of national self understanding.1

We suggest that memories of both the Holocaust and expulsions areentwined. The Holocaust remains a specific event but also spans auniversalizing human rights discourse that conceals the magnitude ofthe Holocaust as a particular historical occurrence; at the same time,the expulsion stops being a particular event and is being reframed asa universal evil called “ethnic cleansing.” Examining recent politicaland public debates about how the expulsions of ethnic Germans arepoliticized and remembered reveals how comparisons to other inci-dents of state sanctioned violence and claims of singularity shape thebalance of universal and particular modes of commemoration.

German Politics and Society, Issue 75 Vol. 23, No. 2, Summer 2005 1

tions of forced migrations after World War II and the location of a“Center against Expulsions” (Zentrum gegen Vertreibung, from hereonthe Center), provide us with an opportunity to explore how the Euro-peanization of the Holocaust and the discourse about expulsionsinform the balance of cosmopolitan and national orientations.

The inscription of historical memories has become an integralpart of public discourse and the memories themselves are subject toself-conscious political appropriations. A central aspect of the poli-tics of memory revolves around controversies about the validity ofhistorical comparisons.5 At first sight, comparisons might appear as aneutral methodological device. However, they also set moral-politi-cal standards and shape the balance between national and cos-mopolitanized forms of memory. Debates about the uniqueness orcomparability of a historical phenomenon reveal a contest overwhether the nation should articulate itself through universal criteria(civic) or a particularistic vocabulary (ethnic). But, there is more atstake. Comparisons can “normalize” events, so that the major signifi-cance of historical comparisons is thus of a moral and political qual-ity. 6 An important site for the organization of collective memoryrelates to debates about the perceived victim status of a group. Theuniversal idea of victimhood begins with the idea that modern war-fare made everyone victims. It does not matter if you start, win, orlose the war because war is a human tragedy affecting all. This iswhy in the universalized discourse on victimhood, war is seen as atragedy and as an aberration from the cosmopolitan path to peace.In universalized victimhood, there is no ultimate difference betweenvictors and vanquished—WWII has made victims of them all—whereas in Jewish Holocaust victim consciousness, there is an essen-tial divide between victims and perpetrators. In short, war makeseveryone a victim, while genocide and ethnic cleansing implies afocus on a perpetrator and a victim.

We perceive, therefore, two parallel and somewhat incompatibleconceptions of victim consciousness—one universal and one particu-lar. The particular highlights the crimes of the aggressor and the uni-versal downplays the crimes through the very idea that we are allvictims. The particular form of victim consciousness depends on thedistinction between perpetrator and victim. In contrast, under theparticular system, there can be no victim without a perpetrator, and,

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Memories of Universal Victimhood

Moreover, these debates shed light on how memories of past injus-tices shape an emerging global discourse that revolves around thedenationalization of historical memories and attempts to renational-ize Germany’s political culture. Representations of the Holocaust areno longer confined to particular national histories. Elsewhere wehave elaborated on how the assumed link between collective mem-ory and nationhood is modified in the context of globalization.Changing memories of the Holocaust, we argued, have led to thedenationalization of memory cultures and have contributed to theemergence of “cosmopolitanized memories.”2 This refers to processesof “internal(ized) globalization” through which global concernsbecome part of the local experiences of an increasing number of peo-ple.3 Not only are memory cultures no longer confined exclusively tonational boundaries, but they are also negotiated with reference tonarratives generated outside the nation. Collective memories of theHolocaust in Europe serve as an admonition that when modernitydevelops exclusively within the nation state, it builds the potential formoral, political, economic, and technological catastrophe. Recentscholarship on what is now called “ethnic cleansing” frequentlyespouses the same view. It is the connection to the modern nationstate and its radical exclusionary forms that pushes the Holocaust tothe forefront in discussions of “ethnic cleansing” and, consequently,informs debates on expulsions.4

Accordingly, we analyze how the tension between universal andparticular readings of past injustices informs the ways in which repre-sentations of German victimhood (and expulsions in particular) havebeen transformed during the last six decades. The Holocaust simulta-neously can be constitutive for a European outlook as well as for amore nationalistic perspective. The Europeanization of the Holocaustin Germany reveals a double bind. On the one hand, it serves as anattempt to universalize while retaining the Sonderweg perspective,that implies Germany’s unique trajectory to and responsibility for theHolocaust. On the other hand, the same process of Europeanizationalso serves as a mechanism to depart from this Sonderweg, and, para-doxically leads to a re-nationalization of Germany through the dis-course of Europeanization. Debates about expulsion and expellees inGermany serve as an illustration of how national and cosmopolitanmemories are linked. Recent controversies about museal representa-

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Daniel Levy & Natan Sznaider

Holocaust, in particular. We conduct a content analysis of officialparliamentary debates pertaining to the Center and we analyze pub-lic discourse as expressed in the feuilleton pages of two major Ger-man newspapers (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, FAZ and SüddeutscheZeitung, SZ).8 In the last section we draw some broader conceptualconclusions about the particular balance of national and cosmopoli-tan modes of remembering.

The Europeanization of Holocaust Memories

Reactions to the Holocaust were prominent in postwar Europe,exemplified in a negative disposition toward nationalism and a cor-responding willingness to let a set of transnational ideas and institu-tions take over many policy areas that were previously under thefirm sovereignty of the nation state. By the 1990s, the Holocaust hadbeen reconfigured as a decontextualized event oriented towardnation-transcending symbols and meaning systems, such as the“Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” While memories of theHolocaust helped to shape the articulation of a new rights culture,once it was in place, it no longer needed to rely on its original articu-lation to assume strong normative powers. Jeffrey Alexander hasreferred to it as the dominant symbolic representation of evil in thelate twentieth century and a foundation for a supranational moraluniversalism.9 Indeed, Holocaust memory and the new rights culturehave been mutually constitutive. Perceived moral and political inter-dependencies are informed by a growing rejection of state sanc-tioned mass atrocities and are being institutionalized throughemerging transnational legal institutions and politically consequen-tial human rights idioms.10 It is precisely the abstract nature of “goodand evil” that symbolizes the Holocaust, contributing to the extra-territorial quality of nation-transcending memories. The Holocaust isnow a concept that has been dislocated from space and time result-ing in its inscription into other acts of injustice and traumaticnational memories across the globe.11

After the Cold War the Holocaust has become an official part ofEuropean memory and is a new founding moment for the idea of aEuropean civilization. January 27th, a day that serves as a reminder

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conversely, to call someone a victim is instantly to accuse someoneelse of being a perpetrator. In this view, there are deserving andundeserving victims. Particularism concentrates on the aggressorsand justifies war and revenge as the means by which victims cease tobe victims and become aggressors, thereby achieving justice. For theuniversal conception, where the ultimate goal is the creation of aworld without war, the concentration on perpetrators undercuts thewhole idea of victim consciousness. All victims are deserving. Thishas been evident not only in the debates about the suffering of theGerman expellees, but also in the recent renewed attention to thememory of German suffering resulting from the Allied bombingcampaign.7 Here too, questions of universality vs. particularity cometo the fore. Are victims members of a specific group (belonging to aformer collective of perpetrators) or are they individuals as in vic-tims of crimes against humanity? Given that representations ofexpulsion are located in the contentious field of cosmopolitanizingand renationalizing forms of remembrance, what is the role of globaland other nation-transcending ideals for national modes of legiti-macy? How is the national reconfigured against the backdrop ofEuropeanized memories?

In the first part of this article we develop the idea that Holocaustmemory is central to a cosmopolitanized form of remembrance thatstands at the center of attempts to create a European mode of collec-tive identification. We then show how a comparable process mani-fests itself in Germany’s political culture, where recent references tothe memory of the Holocaust have served to confirm both Ger-many’s special path as well as a more universal reading of historythat renounces this exceptionalism. The second section provides abrief historical overview of changing representations of Germanexpellees. This serves as background to our analysis of the morerecent debate concerning attempts to exhibit a history of Germanexpellees in the aforementioned “Center Against Expulsion.” Thehistorical perspective is also indispensable for an understanding ofhow different collective memories are appropriated over time. Bothgovernmental and public controversies surrounding the conceptionand location of the museum serve as a paradigmatic case study forthe cosmopolitanization of memories in general, and differentmnemonic strategies involving comparisons of the expulsion and the

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this process was an award-winning news photo of a terribly thin oldman seen through a fence, which coupled with pervasive images ofSerb “camps,” seemed to have been a turning point. Since the Holo-caust was identified in Germany with German militarism, it followedthat German intervention should be opposed, and by analogy, soshould all intervention by Germany’s allies. When the war in Kosovobroke out in 1999, the position of the Left in Germany changed 180degrees. Suddenly it claimed it was intervening to stop new Ausch-witzes. Clearly, this had a lot to with the international pressures andopportunities the war presented, and with the fact that the Left wasnow in government for the first time in eighteen years.

But even in this drastically changed and globalized form, therewas a national distinctiveness to the German understanding of theHolocaust. Foreign Minister Josef Fischer emphasized that expulsionof the Albanians was itself a form of genocide, as defined by the origi-nal genocide conventions. This stance also resonated through theminister’s own biographical “expellee” history—a charged, but long-forgotten issue in Germany. All of this changed with the Kosovo Warand the televised stream of refugees. Images of the refugees blurred.Serbs were compared to Nazis. They were expellers, perpetrators,and violators of human rights. Kosovar refugees were not merelycompared to Jews, but they were also victims, like Germans beingexpelled from the homeland. After many years, Germans could jointhe universal brotherhood of victims through the prism of “ethniccleansing.” One European tradition was played out against another.However, more was at stake, because by bringing Germany in on theside of the US, Fischer changed the political parameters. This shiftwas facilitated through a cautious ideological change in Germany’sperception of the Holocaust. Before Kosovo, only German Conserva-tives wanted to universalize the Holocaust. Leftists were dedicated todefending its uniqueness—any assault on that uniqueness, includingany form of comparison, was perceived as a diminishment of Ger-man war guilt and collective responsibility for the Holocaust. NowFischer was doing exactly that. Germany’s involvement was predi-cated precisely on the comparative admonition that because of theHolocaust Germany had to intervene and stop genocide. Memoriesof Wehrmacht activities in the Balkans were replaced with a humani-tarian imagery of the Bundeswehr.

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for the liberation of Auschwitz, has become the first (official) Euro-pean commemoration of the third millennium. In an emergingEuropean “cosmopolitan” memory, the future of the Holocaust (andnot the past) is now considered in absolutely universal terms: it canhappen to anyone, at anytime, and everyone is responsible. TheHolocaust is no longer about the Jews being exterminated by theGermans. Rather, it is about human beings and the brutal and mostextreme violation of their human rights. The Holocaust is turnedinto a holocaust and becomes a decontextualized symbol. Genocide,ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust are becoming blurred into anapolitical and ahistorical event circumscribed by human rights as thepositive force, and nationalism, as the negative one.

The post-Cold War era and the aftermath of reunification alsocompelled Germany to find a new political and cultural place inEurope. It did so by pursuing a dual strategy centering the Holocaustas an integral part of national history (e.g., the decade-long debateregarding the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin),and simultaneously decentering it by turning the Holocaust into anEuropean event (e.g., arguments for German participation in Kosovodiscussed below). This duality is echoed in an ongoing historiographi-cal debate about the origins of the Holocaust. One perspectiveexplains the rise of Nazism in terms of Germany’s exceptionalnational development,12 whereas the other situates the Holocaust in abroader context of modernity. In this view, Germany ceases to be theexception to the standard path of European national developmentand becomes instead the exemplification of a common modernity.13

All of this, of course, is not a linear or a necessary process, butone that emerges at particular historical junctures. Military interven-tions during the Kosovo conflict constituted such a decisive moment.Indeed, the Balkan wars of the 1990s are a salient example for howHolocaust memories are inscribed into other histories of mass atroc-ity. Through the war in the Balkans a new risk surfaced: genocide.Historical memories of the Holocaust were rhetorically connectedwith the televised representations of what would soon come to bereferred to as “ethnic cleansing.” Even though today, the term isassociated with various ethnic conflicts in past and present, its “ori-gin” lay in the first stage of war in Bosnia in 1992.14 The Holocaustentered through the comparison of the Serbs with Nazis. Crucial in

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theme in public and political discourse. Our main empirical focus inthis section centers on public controversies that emerged at the begin-ning of the 21st century. First, a brief historical overview of previousrepresentations of German expellees provides the backdrop againstwhich historical perceptions of expulsion have been transformed dur-ing the last fifty years. Collective memories do not operate in a vac-uum, but draw selectively upon particular memory traditions thatcharacterize specific periods. Based on the political expediencies ofthe day, older narratives are reinscribed into emerging historicalmemories. Accordingly, German memoryscapes always have been acontingent and political creation. Representations of ethnic Germans’expulsion during these postwar years reflect the changing relation-ship between national and cosmopolitanized frames of commemora-tion. Three distinctive periods characterize this transformation:during the first postwar decade, memories of expulsion occupied cen-ter stage; between the 1960s and 1980s, those memories are relegatedand eventually made taboo;16 since the 1990s there is a resurgent, ifcontroversial, interest in the commemoration of expulsions. We startwith the crucial postwar period as it sets the central terms and memo-ries with which subsequent narratives engage.

The Post-War Period

The Potsdam Treaty sanctioned large population transfers after theSecond World War that resulted in the flight and expulsion of abouttwelve million ethnic Germans from Eastern and Central Europe.They are now commonly referred to as expellees (Vertriebene).17 Itshould be noted that the term introduced along with the “FederalExpellee Law” in 1953, is a charged concept connoting a certainnotion of victimhood. Before that, ethnic Germans were referred toas “refugees,” a reference that situated their history in a broadermigratory context. While the term expellees is well-entrenched inGerman discourse, some scholars have recently suggested situatingthe history of ethnic German expulsion within a more universal con-text of “forced migration” that addresses matters in a European oreven global history of migrations.18 After World War II, West Ger-many faced the problem of salvaging aspects of German nationhoodnot tainted or defined by the Nazi regime. Rather than focus on theactive participation and widespread consent of the German popula-

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Fischer also reiterated that because of his own biography as theson of expellees, he could identify with the plight of the expelled—apoint that did not go unnoticed among German Conservatives. Hewas essentially combining the old frameworks of Left and Right intoa new unity, by championing humanitarian intervention, in partbased on the recognition that Germany was rediscovering its fate ofexpulsion and suffering. The hugely successful publication of Gün-ther Grass’ Crabwalk, as well as the subsequent media attention tothe subject of German wartime suffering, are part of the same devel-opment. In a way, it brought the Left back into the fold of the nationby lending legitimacy to mourn German victims. Arguably, it was atthat moment that the expellee issue shifted from a rather marginalpreoccupation among expellee organizations with their frequentlydiscredited, anachronistic demands into a respectable topic of dis-cussion, as evidenced by the ongoing discussion about the Center.As the Left reopened the national floodgates, distinctions betweenLeft and Right started to blur. However, upon closer inspection, wecan see that the Center controversy also has been an opportunity torelegate a conventional national narrative back to the margins.

In contrast to genocidal activities in Rwanda, interethnic warfare inKosovo with its European setting and its televised images resonatedwith Holocaust iconography.15 Military involvement in Kosovo wasprimarily framed as a moral obligation largely in response to previousfailures to intervene on behalf of innocent civilians. The slogan“Never again Auschwitz” was frequently invoked, but it was no longerconsidered only the failure to stop the Holocaust. “Never Again” wasnow simultaneously a reminder of World War II and the delayedinvolvement in Bosnia. This transposition of Holocaust memory intocontemporary sensibilities about genocide provided the foundation topush the Nuremberg concept of “crimes against humanity” into aglobal arena.

Remembering German Expulsions

Questions about how to balance the subject of expulsion and the par-ticular fate of German expellees, on the one hand, and those expelled(and exterminated) by Germans, on the other, have become a central

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main discursive strategies of comparison dominated the postwarperiod. One compared the injustice committed by Germans withinjustices committed by the victorious powers. Politicians from theRight and Left compared Nazi atrocities with the expulsions by theRed Army and the Allied decisions in Potsdam that had sanctionedthe expulsions. The fate of expellees and German victims was fre-quently invoked to establish that Germans suffered from the war noless than those attacked by Germany. In one of the earlier parlia-mentary sessions dedicated to the integration of expellees, RichardReitzner (Social Democratic Party of Germany, SPD) declared that“the denazification of Germans also requires the depotsdamizationof the victors.”21 Another parliamentarian, Günter Götzendorff, fromthe right-wing Party for Economic Reconstruction (WirtschaftlicheAufbau-Vereinigung, WAV) referred to “the tragic policy of the victori-ous powers, who have signed the Schanddiktat [edict of disgrace] atPotsdam.”22 This language was reminiscent of critics of the WeimarRepublic who referred to the Treaty of Versailles as an unjust anddisproportionate imposition by the victors of the First World War.Comparisons of this sort were made as late as 1951. During a debateon the federal budget for expellees, Konrad Wittmann, anothermember of the WAV asked: “were the victors obliged to match thecrimes Hitler committed with new crimes?”23

A second strategy that forestthadows the politics of competing vic-timhood, was to recount the fate of the expellees in order to establishan equivalence of victimhood with Holocaust victims. The unique-ness of the Holocaust and the discrediting of comparisons would onlylater become a dominant feature of Germany’s political culture. TheSocial Democrat Richard Reitzner declared in parliament: “Europehas had the opportunity to witness catastrophes of similar proportion,but no catastrophe was as influential as the catastrophe of the year1945 [i.e., expulsion].”24 Hans Tichi, a parliamentarian from theExpellee Party (BHE) seconded this sentiment, stating that “we can-not remind the West often enough of its collective guilt regarding thegreat misery of the refugees in Germany.”25 In the first postwardecade, comparisons of the Red Army and Nazism or the fate ofexpellees and Holocaust victims were abundant.

A third strategy that characterized the postwar period and wouldreemerge during the 1990s relates to the Europeanization of the

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tion in the Nazi regime, Germans portrayed themselves as victims.19

This image of victimization dominated the first postwar decade. Theexpulsion of Germans from territories east of the Oder-Neisse linewas a major basis for the collective claim to victim status. Amongother things, victimhood was constructed in opposition to the often-violent large-scale expulsions from states under Soviet influence inCentral and Eastern Europe. The Western Allies as well as KonradAdenauer, the Federal Republic’s first Chancellor, perceived theexpellees as a bulwark of anticommunism and were eager to exploittheir expulsion as a reminder of Soviet aggression and the advan-tages and superiority of a free West.

The beginning of the Cold War and the emergence of a bipolarworld thus provided the geopolitical context within which a percep-tion of German victimhood could thrive. Through the comparisonwith communism, Nazism was part of the totalitarian experience, and,as such, it no longer seemed to be a uniquely German project. On theother hand, theories of totalitarianism, placing the liberal system vis-à-vis European political experiences of fascism and communism, were asignificant building block in the postwar West European experience.It created the basis for a new (West) European identity and served,therefore, also as the basis for a transnational delegation of sover-eignty expressed in the European Convention on Human Rights,which was expressively created to counter a fall into totalitarianism.

Thus, a European consciousness of its totalitarian potential togetherwith perceptions of ethnic Germans’ suffering—sustained throughsocial memories and promoted by published autobiographies and offi-cial commemorative occasions—played a significant role in the rehabil-itation of German national identity. The cultivation of victimhood wasnot confined to the political realm and legislative measures alone. Forexample, the state sponsored a large-scale project, “Documentation ofthe Expulsion of Germans from East-Central Europe,” the politicalpurpose of which was unmistakable.20 It created awareness of the suf-fering of ethnic Germans and established factual foundations for thereturn of property. Moreover, it could place state communism as aforce of evil, an important trope in Cold War Europe.

A few examples of how German victimhood was inscribed intopublic memory underscore how an equivalence of suffering wasestablished. Aside from the aforementioned anticommunism, two

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A new political culture was in the making, mostly propelled by thestudent revolution of 1968, a time when Germany’s first postwar gen-eration came to political maturity. The social memories of this gener-ation were no longer related to the experience of the war. Rather, itperceived the war and nationhood through the growing publicprominence of the Holocaust (from the background of widely publi-cized Nazi trials). Accordingly, this generation shifted public memo-ries from German victims to victims of Germans. Overall, socialmemories of expulsion were gradually replaced by historical memo-ries of a generalized conception of German responsibility for both thewar and the Holocaust. The division of Germany now came to beperceived as just punishment for Auschwitz, but Auschwitz stood pri-marily as a code for German fascism rather than as a source of identi-fication with Jewish victims.

The accusation that the war generation had refused to recognize itsrole as perpetrators and to commemorate the fate of its victims wouldbecome the dominant official narrative of remembrance. HelmutKohl’s chancellorship after 1982 provided a public arena for anattempted recovery of memory tropes from the 1950s, when the suf-fering of expellees dominated Germany’s memory culture. Memoriesof ethnic Germans played an important part in what Kohl termedGeschichtspolitik (politics of history). This conception was based on theassumption that “whoever controls images of the past controls thefuture.” However, Kohl’s efforts met with great resistance, exempli-fied by the Bitburg affair, his pleading for the “grace of late birth,”and other occasions, and the outcomes of the debates essentially rein-forced the officially sanctioned postnational ethos.27

Post-Cold War Period

This is the political cultural background for most of the debates sincethe end of the bipolar world. Two central motives characterize thedebates about expulsion since the late 1990s. Earlier tropes of com-peting victimhood have been revived, albeit under different geopolit-ical and normative circumstances. Memories of expulsion andself-conscious debates about how to commemorate them are now tak-ing place within the context of an expanding European Union. Dif-ferent mnemonic entrepreneurs are trying to Europeanize the themeof expulsion. Of particular interest is the fact that these attempts are

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expellee theme. This process of Europeanizing the phenomenon ofexpulsions, which indeed spanned large parts of the continent for thefirst half of the 20th century, was at once a West German attempt toestablish its democratic credentials and to return to the family ofnations, but it was also a rhetorical strategy to rehabilitate a proudnational narrative. During the 1950s, the European idea—that is, theformation of a transnational Western alliance opposing EasternEurope—was also employed to internationalize Germany’s problemsand repeatedly point to the human and political costs involved. Dur-ing parliamentary debates on the fate of expellees in 1951 Hans Tichi(BHE) praised those who defined the solution to the German refugeeproblem not exclusively as a German, but as an international prob-lem. He was seconded by Josef Trischler (Free Democratic Party,FDP), who wished to “internationalize our refugee problem andencourage the flow of resources from abroad for this problem.”26

It was part of Adenauer’s policy to legitimize German politics bypresenting them as intricately linked to the new idea of a unitedEurope. Representations of expellees’ fate thus served two purposes:they were aimed to assuage the moral responsibility for the Holo-caust by showing that it had been part of a war in which ethniccleansing existed on both sides; and they served as a reminder thatGermany’s integration into the West required continuous attention.

From Social Memories of Expulsion to Historical Memories of the Holocaust

The second historical turning point emerged during the 1960sagainst the backdrop of new foreign policy considerations (Cold Wardétente) and Willy Brandt’s reconciliatory Ostpolitik (politics towardCentral and Eastern Europe). Expellee organizations, a resource dur-ing the earlier phases of the Cold War, objected to these changesand their rhetoric against the East now appeared retrograde and dis-ruptive. Brandt marked them as radical and dangerous. Moreover,negative public perceptions of expellees were intensified in the con-flict between Germany’s first postwar generation and its predeces-sors. The outcome was a reevaluation of Germany’s national past,resulting in public and official representations that increasingly asso-ciated expellee organizations with outdated traditions, historical revi-sionism and the legacies of the Nazi past.

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tanized memoryscape. However, this universal frame of referencedoes not necessarily imply a denationalization of memory politics,but as we will demonstrate, frequently facilitates a re-nationalization.A brief glance at the parliamentary sessions dedicated to the ques-tions of whether and where to build the Center shows that both sidesof the political spectrum (the center-left Social Democratic andGreen government, with the tacit support of the Free Democrats andthe center-right Christian Democratic opposition) see the debate asan opportunity to impose their vision of Erinnerungspolitik (memorypolitics). A central theme revolves around the role of German vic-tims, with opinions oscillating between public recognition andneglect. The government’s objection to Berlin is justified in terms ofa transnational European framework, frequently identifying expul-sions as crimes against humanity. The CDU, on the other hand, seesthe Center as an opportunity to renationalize memories of expul-sion, given that the topic of German suffering largely had been madetaboo in official discourse since the 1970s.28 These positions are bestillustrated by analyzing the respective arguments for Berlin or Wro-claw and the different hierarchies of victim hood with which eachside operates.

The government envisions a “boundary-free European” (grenzen-loses Europa) Center, recognizing all victims without privileging Ger-man suffering. The CDU (along with their conservative Bavariansister party the Christian Social Union, CSU) insists on emphasizingGerman victims and stresses a vision of Europe of nation states. Theidea of Europe and its rhetorical deployment thus indicate the possi-bility for transcending a national point of view as well as the meansthrough which public discourse is renationalized. Particularly theCDU/CSU invokes the European ideal to simultaneously obscurethe national as well as to rehabilitate memories of national suffering.According to Erika Steinbach, the Europeanization of the expulsiontheme would be akin to denying responsibility for expulsions. Giventhe global scope of expulsions, Steinbach concludes: “expulsion is apolitical method that still enjoys worldwide attention. Together wehave to work against that.”29 In other words, expulsions simplythreaten too many nations to subsume it under one framework. Fol-lowing this logic, it is precisely the European, or rather, globaldimension of expulsion that necessitates a renationalization of mem-

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simultaneously driven by those who seek to denationalize collectivememories as well as by groups, usually on the right side of the politi-cal spectrum in Germany, that employ narratives of European vic-timhood as a way to renationalize memories. We pay particularattention to a recent debate about attempts to create a museum aboutthe history of German expellees in a “Center against Expulsion.” Thecontroversies surrounding the conception and location of themuseum serve as a paradigmatic case study for both the cosmopoli-tanization of memories and how comparisons of expulsion and theHolocaust are invoked in order to renationalize collective memory.

In September 2000, Erika Steinbach, a member of the conserva-tive Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and head of the Bund derVertriebenen (Federation of Expellees), joined with Peter Glotz, aSocial Democrat, to seek political and financial support for a “Centeragainst Expulsion” to be located in Berlin. The desire to build such aplace in Germany’s capital created an outcry from those suspectingthat it would re-nationalize Germany’s memory culture, once againprivileging German suffering at the expense of recognizing “others”.Adam Michnik and Adam Krzeminski, two influential Polish intel-lectuals, welcomed the idea of a Center but objected to Berlin as thechosen site. Arguing that at the beginning of the 21st century“national memories should be Europeanized,” they suggested theformer German Breslau, now the city of Wroclaw in Poland, one ofthe epicenters of the expulsion, as a better location for such amuseum. Prominent German intellectuals, scholars and a significantportion of the political class in Germany echoed this view.

The dispute about Berlin or Wroclaw occupied the feuilletonpages of leading German newspapers and was also the subject ofseveral dedicated sessions in parliament. The ensuing debatesrevolved around the question of the proper place for such a museumand the extent to which references to expulsion should remainwithin the confines of national memories or whether the compli-cated relationship of victims and perpetrators should/could be Euro-peanized. The following analysis shows how collective memories ofnational suffering are circumscribed by new legitimating framesattached to a transnational European idea. This, in turn, is supportedby the emergence of a human rights frame, serving many of the pro-tagonists in those debates as a constitutive moment of a cosmopoli-

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new foundation for a European form of cosmopolitanized memory.“It is this act of reconciliation, which becomes the central mnemonicevent. Half a century after the Holocaust, it is no longer the atroci-ties themselves that are at the center of attention (especially in lightof the fact that the majority of surviving victims have died), but howthe heirs of the victims, perpetrators and bystanders are coping withthese stories and the evolving memories.”33

We also discern that this cosmopolitanization entails a distinctivefuture-oriented dimension. It is not a memory that is solely lookingtoward the past to produce a new formative myth. Discussions aboutpostnational collectivities are focused mostly on the future. Cos-mopolitanized memories are based largely on the recognition andthe desire to prevent or limit future suffering. The theme of expul-sion becomes a constitutive moment for a common European pastthat is envisioned as a possible foundation for a shared Europeansystem of values, predicated on a human rights discourse and adeterritorialized memory of the fate of all victims. Memory herebecomes synonymous with the idea of a shared culture and becomesthe main reason to remind people of the expulsions. As MarkusMeckel (SPD) put it during a parliamentary session, “and we aredoing it in a European context; because we are living in a Europethat is growing together and especially the history of expulsions ispart of a European history and cannot be grasped as a singularevent.”34 This view is seconded by Julian Nida-Rümelin (SPD), thethen-Minister of Cultural Affairs.

An enlightened German national identity demands an open treatmentof the expulsion theme, also with regards to the expulsion of the Ger-mans in the East. We should conduct the dialogue about the erectionof a Center against Expulsion on a European plane – considering thefact that the former settler regions of Germans in the East were shapedby a rich cultural mixture that was the product of many influences:Jewish, Polish, Czech, German, to name but a few. This shared Euro-pean heritage must be preserved and developed. A European orientedCenter against Expulsion would be a path-finding contribution.35

This European approach was subsequently sanctioned when thepresidents of Germany and Poland issued a joined statement in Pol-ish Gdansk (the formerly German Danzig) in October 2003, puttingtheir weight behind a transnational solution. Johannes Rau andAleksander Kwasniewski encouraged all Europeans to document

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ory and memory politics. This understanding is not shared by thegoverning parties and the Free Democratic Party.

Leading the parliamentary charge against the location of the cen-ter in Berlin is Markus Meckel (SPD) who stated: “from the verybeginning we have to consider the European dimension.… You[CDU/CSU] suggest a national project with a possible Europeanaddition. I do not believe that this is sufficient … We would like toissue an invitation today to other Europeans to participate in devel-oping a shared conception for such a center.”30

It is important to pursue a European solution that transcends nationalboundaries. In the middle of Europe our respective national historiesare tightly interwoven. National projects alone harbor the danger tocreate upheaval and insecurity among neighbors. We would have toworry that such a national project would be perceived as beingdirected against someone else. Furthermore, our neighbors would askwhy we are discussing a topic that also pertains to their national his-tory, without consulting them. It cannot and should not be a casewhere the suffering of one’s own people is assessed and used againstthe suffering of another. The respective historical backgrounds andconnections of expulsions and forced resettling were very different.The suffering of the affected people, however, was very similar.31

This view is echoed in a speech by Hans Joachim Otto from theoppositional FDP: “The creation of a European Center againstexpulsions is a symbol for a new beginning in a common Europe.Nothing illustrates this better than the fact that recently two of themost prominent Polish publicists, namely Adam Krzeminski andAdam Michnik, expressed their support for such a Center in Wro-claw. It is a European starting signal, so to speak, that the creation ofsuch a Center is no longer perceived by our neighbors in the Eastand also here in the West, as a sign of German revenge, as it hasbeen in the past, but as a European opportunity.”32 Here the cos-mopolitan potential of the expulsion theme is based on two dimen-sions. For one, the historical links of European nation statespotentially create a disposition that would have a negative view of anation-centered museum. Shared historical experiences are now situ-ated in a transnational container where an equivalence of sufferingappears more important than the different causal constellations thatexplain particular episodes of victimhood and their perpetrators. It isthe emphasis on a shared notion of suffering and injustice that trans-forms the theme of expulsions from a nation-centric source into a

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ing the mid 1990s bemoaned as a deficit of the old left. This is alsoabout the final end of a social stigmatization of expellees and theirinstitutions which they experienced in past decades.”37

This tendency to view the European framework as a means toaddress national issues is not confined to Germany. Other states areequally protective of which past they want to commemorate andthere is hardly a consensus. Thus Daniel Brösler writes that reactionsin East Europe indicate a strong preference to address their own vic-timhood under communism: “For Pawel Machcewicz from the Insti-tute of National Remembrance (IPN) in Warsaw, for instance,‘expulsions are merely a fragment of 20th century history.’ If alreadya network, then it should focus on ‘Totalitarianism, World War II,Expulsion, and Forced Resettlements.’”38 Underlying this debate is acontinuous balancing of competing conceptions of victimhood.National memories tend to privilege their own victims. However, dueto the aforementioned transformations, cosmopolitanized memoriescomplicate matters, insofar as they contribute to an emerging duality,because nations have to engage with both their status as victims andtheir role as perpetrators. Competing conceptions of victimhood arethrust into a dynamic that oscillates between denationalization andrenationalization, comparable to the tension between universalhuman rights and specific privileges. The dispute that eruptedbetween Germany and Poland about the location of the Center isemblematic of how precarious the balance of victimhood and perpe-trators is. It also shows the paradoxical effect Europeanization canhave. On the one hand, the European gaze rejects clear-cut perpetra-tor-victim distinctions and any hierarchy of victimhood, stressing thevirtues of dialogue among the different parties. On the other hand, itis precisely this absence of a hierarchy of victims that decontextual-izes (and at times even dehistoricizes) the actual deeds of expulsions.We are not supposed to distinguish between the respective sufferingsof groups and every attempt to privilege one group over another ismet with strong resistance. However, leveling the field of suffering,also has unintended consequences, as it challenges existing beliefsabout who the perpetrators and who the victims are.

This paradox finds a representative expression in Antje Vollmer’s(Green Party) statement before parliament: “the bad spirit of expul-sions is part of what has always threatened Europe. We have all

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and reassess all cases of resettlement, flight and expulsion that hadtaken place during the 20th century. They called on important per-sonalities and politicians to articulate recommendations as to howthis European documentation could be constructed. Their joint dec-laration stresses that resettlement, flight and expulsion are part of thehistory and identity of Europe and that this abyss must be reevalu-ated for a shared future, echoing a trend that started a few year ear-lier. In October 2000, Günther Grass, Czeslaw Milosz, WislawaSzymborska, and Thomas Vonclova, were invited by the GoetheInstitute in Poland, where they discussed the trauma of expulsionand the dangers of nationalism. That meeting resulted in a publica-tion entitled Die Zukunft der Erinnerung (The Future of Memory),essentially prefiguring many of the positions that would come tocharacterize the objections to the Center in Berlin.

A comparable dynamic characterizes the ensuing exchanges in theGerman media, where the subject of the Center has attracted consid-erable attention in the feuilleton sections of major newspapers. InJanuary of 2004, Markus Meckel, who had initiated the debateagainst Berlin as the site for the Center, summarized the “European”approach in a feuilleton contribution in the Süddeutsche Zeitung by say-ing: “World War II and its crimes, but also its consequences, likeexpulsions and deportations, have produced a great deal of sufferingin 20th century Europe. This difficult past binds us today in a sharedresponsibility. If we were to succeed to address not only wars—in par-ticular World War II and the mass extermination of National Social-ism—but also to work through the expulsion history of Europe,without using it against one another, it would be a great step toward ashared future.”36 It is this twinning of Europeanizing what was previ-ously confined to national suffering and a self-conscious decision toredirect memories away from the past toward the future that charac-terizes the debate. To be sure, this view continues to compete with amore conventional national narrative that, while no longer dominant,is still occasionally featured. Thus writes Peter Becher under theheadline “To not forget the suffering of the victims:” “Many of thecritics of the Center apparently have no access to the view that thecommemoration of victimhood is a pious desire of our nation. This isnot just about overcoming the lack of compassion toward Germanvictims, which Antje Vollmer already in a discussion in Munich dur-

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victims who simultaneously belong to the side of the perpetrators?Or is it about directing responsibility toward Eastern Europeancountries? Is the expulsion of German victims a direct consequenceof their own role as perpetrators or are we to remember expulsionsas isolated acts of injustice? It is here that we observe repeated invo-cations of a human rights frame. The fact that there is a near consen-sus on the European idea is articulated by Michael Jeismann writingin the FAZ:

Remembering together and not against each other, is the appeal ofthe shared ‘Danzig Declaration’ by president Johannes Rau and thePolish president Aleksander Kwasniewski from October 2003.Nations are supposed to remember in such a way that the politicalEurope is not weakened but strengthened. All the demands togetherare so different and in part contradictory, that it is difficult to imaginehow they could all be satisfied. In the long run though, at least basedon the experience with national memory cultures, those memoriesthat are politically the most usable, become dominant. The frame-work for a politically useful memory, it can be assumed, will be aEuropean reference to human rights, to which the memory of themurder of European Jews is already attuned to.42

Expulsions are increasingly decontextualized and subsumed under abroader human rights category, which, as we have indicated above,owes its recent prominence to the iconographic status of Holocaustmemories.43 This is also echoed in the aforementioned open letterthat Michnik and Krezminski wrote to the German and Polish presi-dents. Defending Wroclaw as the ideal location for a Center theywrite: “it would be neither a museum exclusively focusing on Ger-man suffering and German accusations, that would transform perpe-trators into victims, nor would it be a museum of Polish martyrdomand colonization, but a museum of catastrophe and a sign for therenewal of our common Europe … with all the suffering that wehave inflicted upon each other—if in an asymmetric fashion—it is pre-cisely this tragedy which has again bound as together.” Typical formany of the positions regarding the Center is that expulsion is rec-ognized as a crime against human rights, pointing to the centrality oftransnational modes of legitimation. Markus Meckel pursues thiskind of argument and recognizes that it has evolved historically:“during the last century it was not only Hitler and Stalin, whocaused expulsions. But, we have to admit, also democrats likeChurchill, Roosevelt and Truman accepted expulsions when they

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shared in the consternation that has resulted from the bitter experi-ences of so many people, convinced that there would be no moreexpulsions. You [Erika Steinbach] said correctly: At least ten Euro-pean nations have been victims as well as perpetrators of expul-sions.”39 This well-intentioned European perspective speaks outagainst the instrumentalization and hierarchization of victims, butultimately obfuscates clear distinctions between victims and perpe-trators. The effects of this conflation vary, depending on howentrenched previous narratives of suffering are.

Writing in the FAZ in early 2004, Norman Naimark, a noted histo-rian of “ethnic cleansing,” distinguishes between Germany’s reactionand those Eastern European neighbors that expelled ethnic Germansfrom their territories. “In contrast to all the other case of ethniccleansing … the expulsion of Germans retains a sense of ambivalenceabout who was a victim and who a perpetrator. There a Centeragainst Expulsions—no matter how carefully it is conceived—shouldnot place the expulsion of German as the central paradigm or asstructured motive. … No victim group … likes to see itself simultane-ously as victims and as perpetrators. Therefore, Poles and Czechs areupset about the accusation that they have committed atrocitiesagainst others, since they were, after all, clearly victims themselves.”40

Germany’s official political culture since the early 1970s has cre-ated a public discourse in which stories about German suffering can-not be voiced without a direct causal reference to German crimescoming before the expulsions. Here lies one crucial difference to thepostwar commemoration of expulsion. During the first two postwardecades, Germany’s official discourse would emphasize the sufferingof Germans without any reference to the aggression that precededand ultimately caused retributions against Germans. Hence, thequestion about commemorating German victims remains a chargedissue, for it has always contained the potential to come at theexpense of a full recognition of the deeds perpetrated by Germansduring World War II. Accordingly, every time German victim hoodis thematized, it is accompanied by the insistence that it is notintended to relativize Germany’s role as perpetrator.41

Nevertheless, the tension between historically specific events andthe general phenomenon of expulsion continuously circumscribesthe debates about the Center. Is it about the recognition of German

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de- and renationalization. In contrast, Meckel’s support for a Centerin Wroclaw, underscores a deterritorialized and cosmopolitanizedform of memory. For him, Europe serves as a vehicle toward thedenationalization of memories.

Conclusions

Today it almost seems natural and right that the formation of collec-tive memory should be an arena of political contestation. Groupsemphasize different narratives and compete over what should be anation’s central symbols. In this article we have shown how the cam-paigns to connect the Holocaust to “ethnic cleansing,” and by exten-sion to genocide, have been related to the changing status of victimhood, and vice versa. Historically, this development is tied to theattempted formation of a nation-transcending European memorysphere. This is not a linear process, but one of shifting foci: with apolitical rhetoric that expressed universal concerns for a brief periodin the postwar period, quickly moving back to the particularisticclaims of national, and, finally, toward cosmopolitan concerns. Atfirst, one might interpret these moments as mutually exclusive. How-ever, one of the central findings in our study indicates a certainsimultaneity, where Europeanization and nationalization do not con-tradict each other. Some of this can already be observed at the endof World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. A former ally ofthe U.S., the Soviet Union, became the enemy and the formerenemy, Germany, became an ally. The galvanizing evil was nolonger “Nazism” but “totalitarianism,” a theory that argued that theessence of Nazism lived on in the Soviet Union and that would havebeen undermined to the extent that the essence of Nazism came tobe seen as German hatred of Jews. Comparisons (including analo-gies and metaphors) are not merely neutral devices but also ideologi-cal vehicles the meanings of which meanings can be transformed.Thus, a universal framework situating memories of the Holocaust onthe same level as the remembrance of German expellees has multi-ple meanings that are determined within the parameters of cos-mopolitanization and renationalization. Accordingly, most of thehistoriographical disputes in Germany have revolved around the

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perceived of forced resettlements as a part of a politics to ensure sta-bility. Today we object to that, because it is unjust. It cannot happen,because it is always predicated on the idea of a collective guilt.Nobody can justify such actions; such violations of human rights wecannot accept.”44 The human rights frame also typifies a third posi-tion that proposes a network approach to the Center rather than adecision for a particular location.

To underscore the universal character of these violations, refer-ences are made to the “century of expulsions” and genocidal eventspredating the Holocaust, such as the Armenian case. Expulsions areincreasingly perceived as a global theme that must be addressed andremembered outside the parameters of national commemoration.Most of the newspaper articles and the parliamentary sessions weanalyzed see the debate about the Center as a trigger for a denation-alized orientation toward human rights. Despite, or possibly pre-cisely because the controversy originally revolved around thebilateral relations of Germany and Poland, a majority favoring thecosmopolitanization of the project argues for a nation-transcendingnarrative as a foundational moment for a European memoryscape. However, it should be reiterated that the adherence to a Europeanframework and other nation-transcending modes of legitimation canalso operate as a means to renationalize memory. The German con-troversy about expulsions is closely tied with how the Holocaust isremembered. Those who wish to understand the Holocaust in acomparative perspective often regard the widespread claim of its sin-gularity as constraining the return to a self-confident nation. Therevisionist right seeks to reverse this by situating the German experi-ence in a comparative framework that revives the Cold War vocabu-lary of totalitarianism, aiming to shift attention from the Holocaustas a unique event that led to the discrediting of the nation in Ger-many to one amenable to comparisons. Some of these positions findtheir expression in the emblematic statements that Erika Steinbachand Markus Meckel advance in the controversy around the locationof the Center. Steinbach views a German laboring through the pastas the starting point for a European memoryscape. But ultimately,the thematization of the role of German victims takes center stage.Europe essentially serves as a segueway to rehabilitate memories ofGerman suffering. Her approach underscores the dialectic between

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Notes

1. We would like to thank the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungs-gemeinschaft,DFG) for its support of this study as part of the Sonderforschungs-bereich 536. We are particularly grateful for the research assistance of MichaelHeinlein and Benedikt Köhler. Thanks also to the two anonymous referees,whose comments also helped us improve the manuscript. For a good overviewof this relationship see Eric Langenbacher, “Changing Memory Regimes in Con-temporary Germany?” German Politics and Society Vol. 21 (1) 2003: 46-68.

2. For a detailed discussion of the concept of ‘cosmopolitan memories’ see DanielLevy and Natan Sznaider Erinnerung im Globalen Zeitalter: Der Holocaust (Frank-furt, 2001) For a revised English translation see Memory in the Global Age: TheHolocaust (Philadelphia, 2005).

3. Ulrich Beck. “The Cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies” in Theory, Culture &Society 19 (1-2) 2002: 17-44.

4. Recent examples include Norman Naimark Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in20thCenturyEurope (Cambridge, 2002); Mark Mazower. Dark Continent: Europe’s20th Century. Knopf: (New York, 1998); Jennifer Jackson Preece. “Ethnic Cleans-ing as an Instrument of Nation-State Creation: Changing State Practices andEvolving Norms”, in Human Rights Quarterly, 20 1998: 817-842.

5. For a conceptual discussion see Daniel Levy “The Future of the Past: Historio-graphical Disputes and Competing Memories in Germany and Israel” in Historyand Theory Vol. 38(1) 1999: 51-66.

6. The Historikerstreit (Historians’ Dispute) of the late 1980s is a formidable exam-ple for how historical narratives of uniqueness or comparability inform possibleforms of collective identification. See Charles Maier. The Unmasterable Past: His-tory, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Cambridge, 1988).

7. See especially Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940-1945(München, 2002); see also Lothar Kettenacker, ed., Ein Volk von Opfern? Die neueDebatte um den Bombenkrieg 1940-45 (Berlin, 2003).

8. The choice of these two newspapers is not arbitrary. Especially their cultural sec-tions (feuilleton) do not only follow public debates, but frequently set the agendafor them. The FAZ is considered a newspaper with a more national and conserv-ative agenda, while the SZ represents a more left-liberal view. Together, theyreflect a reliable picture of German intellectual public discourse.

9. Jeffrey Alexander “On the Social Construction of Moral Universals: The ‘Holo-caust’ from War Crime to Trauma Drama.” In European Journal of Social Theory.5(1) 2002: 5-85.

10. For a detailed historical analysis see Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider. “The Insti-tutionalization of Cosmopolitan Morality: The Holocaust and Human Rights.”in Journal of Human Rights 3(2) 2004: 143-157.

11. Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider. “Memory Unbound: The Holocaust and theFormation of Cosmopolitan Memory.” in European Journal of Social Theory 5(1)2002: 87-106.

12. The most controversial exponent of this approach is Daniel Goldhagen. For agood overview of the controversy, see Geoffrey Eley, ed., The “Goldhagen Effect”:History, Memory, Nazism-Past (Ann Arbor, 2000).

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issue of uniqueness and comparability. With the end of the ColdWar, renewed efforts to subsume both the extermination of Euro-pean Jewry and the expulsion of ethnic Germans are now part of apervasive human rights discourse.

This is a double-edged sword, one in which representations of theHolocaust carry dual meanings. On the one hand, the new under-standing of ethnic cleansing, including Germans as victims trying tomemorialize their victimhood, is a cosmopolitan history of multiplici-ties insofar as it encompasses the suffering of others in universalterms. This becomes especially true when the Holocaust is recountedas one part of a broader narrative about ethnic cleansing.45 Much ofthis relates to a broader debate about modernity and the idea of theethnically homogenous nation state. In this view, the Holocaust losesits German specificity and is reset into the context of modernity.46

Germany ceases to be the exception to the standard path of Europeannational development. What distinguished the Third Reich was itsextremity, but not its uniqueness. It is the ethnic nation state that isnow perceived as the quintessential evil in history. The Holocaust issubsumed under the broader category of the “Century of Expulsions”and, as such, is merely another, even if more extreme, incident of eth-nic cleansing or genocide. Here the Second World War becomes a big“European Civil War,” a term that, among other things, ignited the“Historians Dispute” during the 1980s, but now barely registers assomething extraordinary. Thus, we see how, depending on the partic-ular political cultural and geopolitical context, Holocaust representa-tions become a source for both cosmopolitan and particularisticnational outlooks. In both instances the European context informs theextent to which self-conscious Geschichtspolitik is deployed. Accord-ingly, every decontextualization involves a recontextualization.

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29. BT, Stenographischer Bericht 236. Sitzung: 23592C30. BT, Stenographischer Bericht 236. Sitzung: 23590C/D.31. BT, Stenographischer Bericht 248. Sitzung: 25235D/25236A.32. BT, Stenographischer Bericht 236. Sitzung: 23591 B/C.33. Levy and Sznaider 2002, 103 34. BT, Stenographischer Bericht 236. Sitzung: 23590B.35. BT, Stenographischer Bericht 248. Sitzung: 23626C/D.36. Süddeutsche Zeitung , 23 January 2004, 2.37. Süddeutsche Zeitung, 30 October 2003, 2.38. Süddeutsche Zeitung (March 16, 2004: 16).39. BT, Stenographischer Bericht 236. Sitzung: 23592D.40. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 21 January 2004, 7.41. Not unlike the discursive parallels between post-war reactions and attempts dur-

ing the 1980s to revive certain conceptions of victimhood, the last few yearshave shifted renewed attention to the comparison of perpetrators. A goodexample is the recent study by Wilhelm Heitmeyer (2004). Deutsche Zustände,Folge 3. Frankfurt a. Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, according to which in a recent sur-vey 51% of respondents said that there is not much of a difference between whatIsrael is doing to the Palestinians today and what the Nazis did to the Jews dur-ing the Holocaust. And 68% believe that Israel is waging a ‘war of extermina-tion’ against the Palestinians.

42. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 15 March 2004, 41.43. Levy and Sznaider (2004).44. BT, Stenographischer Bericht 236. Sitzung: 23590C.45. See Aly (1995) and Schlögel (2003).46. See Bauman (1999).

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13. For the seminal statement in this approach see Zygmunt Bauman’s Holocaust andModernity (Cambridge, 1999).

14. Naimark, Fires of Hatred, 2001.15. For that matter the state tolerated ethnic cleansing in Sudan in 2004 is another

example for both the ongoing passivity of the international community and itsown discomfort with being a bystander, as evidenced in the urgent appeals ofColin Powell and Kofi Annan in July 2004, as well as Powell’s subsequentexplicit reference to the genocidal features of the Darfur events.

16. For a detailed discussion of how taboos circumscribe the shape of memory cul-tures, see Jeffrey Olick and Daniel Levy “Mechanisms of Cultural Constraint:Holocaust Myth and Rationality in German Politics” in American SociologicalReview 62 1997: 921-936.

17. Two million ethnic Germans followed between 1950 and 1988, referred to asAussiedler (literally late resettlers or ethnic German immigrants). The termAussiedler is also politically charged. It literally means “outsettlers.” However, thenotion of outsettling is misleading since it implies that ethnic Germans wereforced to leave their original homes, which was not the case for most of thosewho immigrated after 1950. They should rather be considered as “resettlers” tothe country of their ancestors.

18. Götz Aly. Endlösung. Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europäischen Juden(Frankfurt, 1995). Karl Schlögel. “Tragödie der Vertreibungen. Über dasErfordernis, ein europäisches Ereignis neu zu erzählen.“ Lettre 79 2003: 78-83.

19. Robert Moeller has provided ample evidence for this trend. See his. War Stories:The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley, 2001). Seealso Robert Moeller. “What was „Coming to Terms with the Past“ meant in Post-World War II Germany? From History of Memory to the “History of Memory”in Central European History 35 2002: 223-256.

20. Mathias Beer. “Im Spannungsfeld von Politik und Zeitgeschichte. Das Gross-forschungsprojekt ‘Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mit-teleuropa” Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 3 1998: 345-391.

21. Deutscher Bundestag (BT from now on), 10/20/1949.22. BT, 1/18/1950.23. BT, 4/19/1951.24. BT, 4/19/1951.25. BT, 4/19/1951.26. BT, 4/19/1951.27. Geoffrey Hartman (ed.) Bitburg in Moral and Historical Perspective (Bloomington,

1985).28. Among conservatives and the CDU there is also the occasional attempt to retain

a conventional national focus by bracketing the European framework. As ErikaReinhardt, speaking on behalf of the CDU/CSU states: “Our historical amne-sia—Geschichtsvergessenheit—does not do us any good, as Professor Arnulf Baringhas pointed out so well. It is therefore important that Germans know their ownsuffering and allow for their own mourning. This is also about an inner balanceof the nation coping with history. This will only succeed if the Center againstExpulsions is at a location that is not on the margins but in the center. This loca-tion is in Berlin, Germany’s capital.” BT, Stenographischer Bericht 236. Sitzung:23589C) However, this position, fairly standard fare during the 1980s, by now ismore of an exception.

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